Is Adnauseam effective, or is it causing more harm? Data poisoning / obfuscation vs block all approach #2719
Opening-Button-8988
started this conversation in
General
Replies: 1 comment
-
|
I'd still love some feedback on this, especially from the devs. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
0 replies
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
-
I'm on the fence about whether Adnauseam is really worth using, and what the trade offs are.
I heard of Adnauseam several years ago but re-discovered it recently from Louis Rossmann's recent video about it, and also watched SomeOrdinaryGamers's recent video. I have read the FAQ, I haven't read the paper.
I ask this question because there is some criticism against Adnauseam.
Some examples I found:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916973
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567215
There are criticisms against data poisoning, which I believe is the correct term for the kind of approach Adnauseam has. Here's a paper titled "Data Poisoning Won't Save You From Facial Recognition" where it targets fawkes, a facial image cloaking software and suggests they don't work, or that their usefulness becomes increasingly diminished over time.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14851
In general, when it comes to handling personal information on my logins across the web, I've always preferred to remove information and accounts rather than obfuscate it, where possible. In cases where you can't delete your account, I choose to obfuscate my information. But some people do the opposite. I think this is "privacy theatre" (as in "security theatre"). They believe they're "hacking" the system, but data that doesn't exist can't be used to track you.
Adnauseam is incompatible with other ad blockers, and requires that you disable ad blocking everywhere (at the browser, OS and network level) for it to be effective. I wonder if this comes at a cost, and if so, what?
When the extension clicks on an ad, in the process of doing so it pings a domain using my IP address. That sounds like a potential flaw, you can have all kinds of blocking or obfuscating going on, but at the end of the day, the ad network knows that I (as in my IP) pinged one of their domains. That is an identifable piece of information that the ad network now has, where it wouldn't have otherwise. This ignores the fact that some websites can bypass block filters where instead of hosting ads at ads.website.com, they can host it at website.com/ads. But this is more of a general flaw of all adblockers and DNS filters, not just Adnauseam.
These are some of my unorganised thoughts about Adnauseam. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions